Having Paul's masterly epistle to the Romans, in the first chapter of which he so distinctly portrays man's tendency to change "the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever, they were careful to remember that "God is a spirit," and to be worshipped only in spirit. Peter, in his epistle to them, also wrote of the One "whom having not seen ye love." As time wore on, however, the original inclination of man to worship a god he could see and feel (a trait seen all down the pages of history) asserted itself, and Mary, the mother of Christ, took the place in the eye and the heart previously occupied by her predecessors. [Footnote: Just as this work goes to press, the dally papers of the world announce that the oldest idol ever discovered has just been unearthed. The idol is a goddess, who is holding an infant in her arms.] Being in possession of the Acts of the Apostles, which plainly declares that Mary herself met with the rest of the disciples "for prayer and supplication," and, knowing from the four Gospels that no worship had been at first given to her, the innovation was slow to find favor; but, in the year 431, the Council of Ephesus decided that Mary was equal with God. "After the ruin of paganism they were no longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious parallel" in the idol worship. Symptoms of degeneracy may be observed even in the first generations which adopted and cherished this pernicious innovation. "The worship of images had stolen into the Church by insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of comfort and innocent of sin. But, in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension that, under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers. They heard with grief and impatience the name of 'idolaters,' the incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans, who derived from the Law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all the relative worship." [Footnote: Gibbons' "Rome."]